Typical mobile communications devices, such as smart phones, tablets and the like, are configured for voice and data communications over networks, and to execute a variety of applications in such regard. These applications may include, but are not limited to, the following functions: phone, media player, mapping, calendar, email, instant messaging (IM), text messaging (e.g., for sending and receiving short message service (SMS)/multimedia message (MMS) messages), among others.
Short-range wireless connectivity standards/technologies enable users to communicatively couple a wide range of devices without the need for physical connectivity. Such expedients provide a high speed mobile connection for the communication of voice and data. Standards include Bluetooth®, Ultra-Wideband (UWB), IrDA, ZigBee, WiFi (802.11), and the like.
Bluetooth provides a “piconet” or Personal Area Network (PAN) than provides connectivity between a roaster device and a plurality of slave devices, such as for mobile phones, keyboards, headsets, and other peripherals. In automotive applications, Bluetooth® is widely deployed to provide a “hands-free” environment while driving.
Typically, a car Bluetooth® system provides a pairing priority based on temporal pairing, Thus, if several passengers carrying phones that have been previously paired to the car system enter the vehicle at the same time, the system will assign a priority rank based on the most recently paired phone. If the number of available pairing slots is, for example, limited to 3 devices where no additional pairing slot is available, then the latest paired phone erases the lowest, priority and downwardly adjusts the remaining pairing slots to a lower priority. This arrangement has obvious limitations.